When the Going gets Tough

            It’s a warm evening, the sun is just setting behind the trees in my back yard, and the house is quiet with the exception of my daughter playing her iPad next to me.

            

I can always tell when it’s a writing night because my heart gets this feeling of urgency. It’s like the inner workings of everything that’s been happening in my life, need a place to land and I end up here. I’ve been finding my footing in this space of adult-hood, especially in the last 8 months. When I started putting my health first, my mental health became a priority too. It’s all connected. I’m learning that the things we go through in this life-time are all filtered through these three things we need to balance. Our minds, our spirituality & our physical bodies. I’m learning this year that we need to work on all three in order to find momentum to move forward, to grow.

I’ve always been a transparent person. If I’m not willing to share and be relational, how can I grow? Something I’ve always been a little hesitant to share about is my marriage. It’s a sacred space and I like to keep it hidden in this safe little box. But when I speak of relationships- how can I not speak of one of the biggest relationships in my life?

Jon and I have been married for now 5 years, been together for 10. We’ve been through more things I can list here, but we’ve always managed to stay on a steady pace. Something I think we all hope for is healthy, loving relationships. We want to feel loved. We want to be able to not just communicate but have our words be understood. I will not pretend here that this always happens between the two of us, especially lately.

I have to believe that marriage, even when hard, that we can make it through- because we don’t have an option. When I vowed those promises, I meant it. I may not have understood the magnitude of those promises, but nevertheless, they were made.

I think a lot of us have reached the point where we understand that love is not a feeling, it’s a choice. We need to choose every day to try to make the other one feel loved.

 I think a lot of us get married thinking that since we have such an intense emotion for each other, it will be easy to lean on. 
However when we’re feeling like running away, we need to remember that there are so much more than emotions that keep us strong.

It’s the selflessness of loving that person more than we love ourselves.

It’s digging deeper to remember why we made those promises in the first place.

It’s the importance of standing by our word to be strong examples for our children.

It’s the truth that God loved us so much that He died for us; THAT’S the love God demands us to have for the ones we choose to place in our lives.

I will always be striving to do these things because the love I have for Jon is a choice so much bigger than any emotion I could ever feel; it’s a choice I made because when push comes to shove, God put us in each other’s lives to be there for one another.

To have each other’s best interest and to hold each other up, no matter how we’re feeling that day.

My prayer in writing this delicate piece is that it will be a good reminder, in a world that Satan loves to tease us in to the idea that it would be easier to give up. Stay strong my friends.